Getting started with iBeacons... help?

[jramsey021]

I apologize for this possibly vague or overused question... but what in the world do I need to do to get started using iBeacons?

My boss purchased a small set of 3 Bleu Beacons from TwoCanoes for us to mess around with and take for a test drive but I cannot find any actually relevant guides for what we would like to do. I can find all kinds of lists of "10 cool things you can do with iBeacons" that just tells us what can be done... but not how to do it.

We will be using the iBeacons in education and would like to do some things such as opening an app in single-app mode for a "Reading Corner" when a student takes an iPad into the library or when a guest enters a school building connecting them to the guest WiFi and sending a notification that they can open up to go to that schools website or other things like that.

Where do we even get started with this? Do we need to develop our own apps for this or are there ones we can use to do these relatively simple things? Where can I find resources for iBeacon deployment such as a step-by-step guide to initial setup or deployment just so we can start getting our feet wet.

I'm not really looking for all of the answers, but just some actual guidance as to HOW to go about these "10 cool things you can do with iBeacons" and not just what things I can do.

[Emmert]

I ordered a couple of Radbeacon devices from Amazon a couple of weeks ago and I'm in a similar position. Here's how far I got with them:

1. Get the UUID of your iBeacon from something that can talk to it. In my case, this was the Radbeacon iPad app that uses bluetooth to configure it.
2. In your JSS, add it from Settings > Network Organization > Sites and add it.
3. Once an iBeacon site exists, you can use it to sort of scope things from the "limit" tab. I made a config profile containing a web clip, and scoped it to "all devices," with the limitation of the beacon site I made.
4. Now I can make a smart group that contains all of the devices with this config profile on it, indirectly telling me what's talked to the beacon.

Now, here's the rub. It seems that you have to open Self Service for it to know that these beacons exist and to watch for them. This means that only iPad that I've hand-opened Self Service on recently are getting the webclip. Also, they don't seem to reliably be removing it after they've wandered off.

I feel like there's some fundamental trick here that I'm not understanding, which is why they're so disappointing.

It could also be that they're not that great, which is why there's little discussion or information on them.

[May]

If you haven't already i think you'll need to configure the beacon using the twocanoes application

one thing that stumped me for a while was to that you need to make sure Computer Inventory Collection has monitor iBeacon Regions ticked, then in the policy use the custom trigger "beaconStateChange"
I made an in-range and out of range test policy that pops up a message when it ran so i knew the beacon was working.

[jramsey021]

Thank you Emmert and May for that information. I had been playing around with the iBeacon and the GeoHopper app but that app doesn't seem to be what we are looking for... just something fun that we may use at some point to keep track of what building our technicians are in without them having to actually check back in and tell someone every time.

I had added the iBeacon to the JSS using the BleuJSS app that twocanoes offers but hadn't done the computer inventory policy yet, so that was helpful.

I also agree that there has to be something with these iBeacons that we are missing... that or they are most beneficial if you integrate them into an app that you have already developed. We will continue playing around and trying to research them, but there just seems so little information about them and how to use them.

Thanks again, and if you figure anything else out I'd be happy to hear!

[jramsey021]

Emmert, I have had some time to look into the suggestions you made now for getting started and I am a little confused. I have attached a screenshot of the Network Organization settings where you can see that iBeacons and Site are two separate settings.

I have put in the UUID/Major/Minor in the iBeacon and gave it a generic name for now of iBeacon1 and I have created a generic Site with the name of iBeacon1 as well. When I go to a Configuration Profile and try to scope it out to the iBeacon I don't see anything related to iBeacon1 as a scope option. I see no Sites nor iBeacons at all, only Mobile Devices, Mobile Device Groups, Users, User Groups, Buildings, and Departments.

[Emmert]

I don't think you need to add it as a site, just an iBeacon. It's just organized in the sites area.

Scope your config to all devices under "targets," then scale the scope back to just to devices that see the iBeacon under the Limitations tab.

I have no idea why it's set up this way.